This is about my very
personal experience with the Mirena coil. It is not a lament about its
existence or against its use; it is one story – my story. I know other people
who have used this method of dealing with their period woes and are very happy
with it. That is not my experience. My experience was horrible and traumatic
and I’m writing about it because this is my period blog.
As mentioned in an earlier
post, after it became clear that tranexamic acid wasn’t really an adequate
treatment I had more tests. These included an intra-vaginal scan, and a
subsequent appointment with a gynaecologist. A word on intra-vaginal scans – lying
in a darkened room and having a slightly vibrating wand wiggled around your
vagina is a very disconcerting experience in the context of a medical exam.
The results were
frustratingly inconclusive. When I got to see the gynaecologist his only real
advice was that I get a Mirena coil fitted. Because he didn't really think a
hysterectomy was quite the thing, it’s a bit drastic and anyway, it has a
tendency to make women put on weight, and that’s something I have a bit of an
issue with... Thank you for your input there, Mr Gynaecologist, your reference
to my weight ‘issues’, as you perceive them, is most helpful and relevant. No
really. So anyway, the two choices boiled down to either a method of
contraception or a major operation.
I put off having the coil
fitted for a year because I was terrified of having it done. I'd read too many
awful experiences online to be calm about it, despite knowing people in real
life who'd had it without much of a fuss at all. Finally though, I persuaded
myself the benefits outweighed my fears. It took a couple of visits to my local
clinic before I could actually get it fitted. Ideally, it needs to be fitted
during a period, but this isn’t always practical when you bleed very heavily.
Also, if you want to get it fitted, don’t have sex after the first day of your
period or you might get turned away on the slim chance you might be pregnant,
even if you used contraception. And be prepared to be told you need to lose
weight, as a general and repeated maxim. Not that that’s relevant to whether
you can have the coil, but you might not be aware of how fat you are if
healthcare professionals don’t keep telling you repeatedly.
Anyway, eventually I got an
appointment and got the damn thing fitted. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant
experience. It turns out my cervix isn’t keen on being cranked opened and
having a weird little thing passed through it. Afterwards I had to sit in the waiting area with my head between my knees
until the nausea, dizziness, hot flushes and shaking stopped.
I felt pretty ropey for the
next day or two, and horribly conscious of my bits. But I was prepared for some
initial discomfort and was convinced it would be fine fairly soon. Wrong.
I hated every minute it was inside me. I never felt quite right with it, but I
suffered with it for a year, hoping I'd get to the point of light or no
periods. Instead I had near constant low-level bleeding. As it wasn’t the
uncontrollable bleeding I’d been having I was still prepared to take it as a
bit of a win.
Unfortunately, the bleeding
got heavier as the months passed, along with increasing levels of pain. I
started getting massive cramps again, until about a year after having it fitted
my body said That Is Enough and expelled it all by itself one evening,
completely wrapped in menstrual lining. This counts as one of the most horrid
experiences of my life. It wasn’t just painful but also frightening, because
what the hell was going on? All I knew was that the cramping was intense and
that the bleeding was scary as I sat on the toilet and cramped and bled and
cried continually for an hour or more.
Obviously, this treatment
was not for me. As I said, I know actual real life people for whom it has been
a success, but clearly it is not for everyone. Of course, there’s no way of
knowing until you try. Well, not until there’s a lot more research into
understanding why people suffer from dysfunctional periods. I would appreciate
a method of dealing with them that wasn’t a by-product of contraception,
because if you start having trouble with the Pill then chances are you’re going
to have trouble with other hormone-based remedies, no? And the Mirena coil
releases a low-level dose of progesterone into the womb. The more I think about
this, with my non-medical non-scientific brain, the less sense it makes. But it
does explain why the Progesterone-only Pill had much the same effect on my
periods over the course of a year.
I could be wrong and maybe
there is a Pill that would be suitable for me again, but it does make me
reluctant to keep experimenting. The experience has definitely made me
incredibly reluctant to undergo more tests and examinations – I put off a smear
test for a year, which is not a good thing to do in the slightest.
This post is getting far
too long now so I’ll end with saying I think there’s a range of things to talk
and be cross about contained in here around women’s bodies and how they are
discussed and cared for, which are much wider than my personal experience and
need to be talked about openly and dismantled. I remain adamant that we need to tell our stories.
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